Thursday, May 28, 2015

(With the clock ticking down to Hannibal’s third season premiere next
Thursday, I’ve decided to combine the next two episodes of Season 2 into one
essay.Hopefully this double feature
will still serve much the same purpose as the other essays in this series.)

In the grand, thirteen course,
cinematic meal of Hannibal’s second
season, “Mukozuke” and “Futamono” serve as a critical crossroads for the main
characters and the narrative arc in general.Allegiances shift, motivations become vague and cloudy, and the very
fabric of the show’s reality begins to split.And the genesis point for all of this is the murder of a supporting character
not known for eliciting passionate sympathy.

Bryan Fuller’s choice to kill
Beverly Katz is an interesting one.All
credit to Hetienne Park, who brought a steely, analytical reserve to her
portrayal of Katz, one which served as a welcome corrective to the fog of
deception that often envelops the other characters.But that reasoned pragmatism (and a screen
presence that was often limited to autopsy exposition with Zeller and Price,
where she was the straight man…er, woman) wasn’t designed to form a strong
connection with the audience.At this
point, she’s the most prominent character to be murdered, and that memorable
moment at the conclusion of “Takiawase” when she discovers Hannibal’s
sub-basement layer, only for him to discover her, grips the viewer as any good
suspense beat would.Still, the pure
fact of her death isn’t an emotionally shattering experience.

Maybe Fuller’s intent all along
was to use Beverly’s death as a blank slate upon which the other characters
could project their burgeoning guilt.Because the grief that Jack and Will display at her death scene is some
of the most shattering that the show has depicted up to this point.And it’s so affecting because of the buildup
we’ve had with these characters, to the point that the subdued nature of their
actual reactions comes across as seismic.

I’ve discussed the guilt that
eats away at Jack extensively in this essay series.Laurence Fishburne’s naturally stoic,
fatherly presence is such a boon to his portrayal of the character.In a show that thrives on some all-time great
faces, his deep set, brooding features are a perfect canvas for all sorts of
subtle emotional shifts and nuances, while still maintaining a constant sense
of pensive contemplation.The establishment
of his long-term pain over sending Miriam Lass to her apparent doom, and then
repeating it with Will (as well as the pain from Bella’s slow death march) has
sometimes been expressed in his short bursts of anger.But this is a man who internalizes his grief,
the pressures of paternity both personal and professional tamping down any true
catharsis.So when he doubles over in
agony upon seeing Beverly’s corpse on elaborate display, the audience feels
that pain acutely.

Will’s moment of agony is even
more gripping, for entirely different reasons.Hugh Dancy is often such a livewire in this role, alternating between
moments of near disintegration and semi-autistic coldness, that it can take a while
during Season 1 to latch onto him emotionally.He hits a real peak in the S1 finale, especially in his moments with
Alana, but Season 2 requires him to take on a much more smoldering presence as
he calculates an exit strategy while also struggling with his growing interior
darkness.As with Jack, his reaction to
Beverly’s murder is motivated by guilt; Jack implicitly gives her permission to
continue visiting Will, while Will essentially sends her off to Hannibal’s
house of horrors.The real crushing
moment of his reaction comes when he attempts to enter his empathic vision of
her death, but is overcome with sadness and heartbreak. Dancy’s brief, simple
convulsion of pain is so affecting coming from a character who has always been
able to view these visions as exercises in formal inquiry.

And the true weight of Beverly’s
death sources back to Hannibal himself.His character arc through the first seventeen episodes has been so
complex and deftly shaded in ambiguity that even when we see him actually
committing a murder, his childlike, amoral sense of inquisitiveness almost
seems to balance things out.But almost
all of those murders (save his apparent slaughter of Abigail Hobbs) have
involved the guilty or the relatively anonymous.Murdering Beverly is his step beyond that
barrier and into a world that both we and the other characters intimately
know.For the first time (aside from
Will’s grief over Abigail), his murderous instincts have touched a raw
nerve.And the synthesis of her murder
and his Machiavellian frame job from Season 1 is what drives Will to realms
that he’s long feared.

Hurling Will headlong into the
abyss during Season 2 is a bold move on Fuller’s part.He’s clearly meant to be the audience
surrogate, especially in a classic dramatic sense, so the depths to which he
plunges in the name of catching Hannibal can often be wildly alienating.His visions of his transformation, the black
Wendigo-like antlers sprouting forth from his back, are potent, disturbing
stuff.And his manipulation of Matthew
Brown, his guard and the murderer of Andrew Sykes, into attempting to murder
Hannibal is certainly not standard heroic narrative material, even in revenge
sagas.The chilling image of Will’s
blank expression overlapping with his vision of a blood-saturated sink,
blending with the rivulet of Hannibal’s blood entering the drain at his spa
(featured at the beginning of this essay) is a powerful image of a man becoming
completely lost in his own private hell, the black handles of the sink becoming
the inky recesses where his eyes should be (and another callback/foreshadowing
of the eye imagery that dominates the classic Francis Dolarhyde storyline.)

Perhaps the most significant
shift in alliances during this two episode run occurs when Alana Bloom sleeps
with Hannibal, and subsequently serves as his alibi when Jack questions him
about the disappearance of Abel Gideon.Alana can be such a frustrating character during these first two
seasons.She’s the ultimate voice of
reason and empathy when she reports Jack to the FBI’s IA department following
his handling of Will, but her romantic rejection of Will drives him even
further into his insanity spiral.She’s
clearly a very sensitive person, one driven by a deep sense of insecurity about
the influence of her professional duties on her personal desires (which
strongly connects her to Will and Jack.)Trapped in a cycle of bad timing, she tries to serve as her own
psychiatrist when she wants romance with Will, but when she finally decides to
follow her gut instinct it leads her right into the arms of Hannibal, the
ultimate manipulator.Will’s central
conflict is often driven by how he’s manipulated by Jack and Hannibal; Alana’s
desire to do the right thing inadvertently makes her just as vulnerable to
manipulation.

But being manipulated by Hannibal
Lecter is not a permanent mark on anyone, so expertly has he honed those
skills.His psychological experiments in
Season 1 left a trail of carnage in their wake, while also serving as master
classes in subtlety.But this two
episode run shows a Hannibal who is beginning to relish his role as puppet
master.He spends so much time in the early
parts of this season mourning the absence of his friend/lover interest that
when Will orders his murder it almost liberates him from those concerns.In many ways, he’s the jilted lover who
decides to gain revenge on his ex by sleeping with his lover and going on a
debauched rampage.And that sense of
liberated decadence also extends to the stylistic aspects of these
episodes.I’ve mentioned before how
Hannibal has a viral effect on both these characters and the audience.“Futamono”, in particular, offers a cavalcade
of surrealist fancy, as his sheet music crossfades into Will, the notes later
blossoming into the flowers of Sheldon Isley’s remains in the autopsy room.When he tells Alana that he’s famished from
the trauma of his death scare, the imagery shifts from a close up of his eye to
a psychedelic montage of flowers blooming.It’s rebirth on several different levels, but leading toward the death
of the city councilman.But these
avant-garde leanings are only the tip of the iceberg as far as the madness of
Season 2 goes.

As always, the leftovers:

*Aside from his subsequent cameo
as a corpse, this is the last call for Eddie Izzard as Abel Gideon.The Hopkins-esque delight he took in this
character made him a memorable foil to Hannibal, and in this two episode sendoff
he’s given a real sense of emotional grounding to complement his
sociopathy.Gideon might be a nutjob,
but he’s a passionate nutjob.

*Brian Reitzell really outdoes
himself with the score for these two episodes.His extensive use of a bronze slit drum throughout “Mukozuke” creates a
nightmare soundscape that is both atmospheric and completely unnerving
(particularly in the immediate aftermath of Beverly’s murder and Will’s
investigation of it.)Following such a jarring
auditory experience with the stylized, almost soothing harpsichord tones of “Futamono”
is a great contrast, as well as a reflection of Hannibal’s growing power over
all aspects of the show.

*Seeing Will strapped down in a
gurney with a revised version of the classic Silence of the Lambs Lecter mask is such a bizarre, delightful
sight.And to hear him echo Hopkins as
Lecter when he grills Jack about the Chesapeake Ripper’s motivations (as Jodie
Foster receives in the film) is also a nice touch. It’ll be interesting to see how far Bryan
Fuller eventually advances into the Lecter mythos.All of these references to the pre-existing
works create a fascinating hall of mirrors that might only get more compelling
if Jame Gumb ever shows up.

*And speaking of Silence
references: “The last time someone rang my doorbell this early, it was a census
taker.” (Hannibal, to Alana.)

*“All the things that make us who
we are.What has to happen to make those
things change?” (Gideon, to Alana.)

*Freddie Lounds gets the prime
gig of discovering Beverly’s body, while also playing quid pro quo with Will
for the rights to his story.She also
gets a rare, completely human moment when she pleads with Jack not to enter the
crime scene.Lara Jane Chorostecki is
such a pleasure to watch as this decidedly prickly character, so her eventual involvement
with the further machinations of the plot to catch Hannibal is a welcome treat.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

As I wrote about in my essay for Season
1’s “Roti”, Hannibal has dealt
extensively with the subject of authority and protectorship, and all the
attendant responsibilities that are so often abdicated therein.Will has been the most notable victim of
manipulation at the hands of authority figures, but the roll call of damaged
subordinates is lengthy.“Takiawase”
touches on this subject once again, but in this case it offers a portrait of
people trying desperately to be good protectors, albeit with their own
interesting motivations.

With her cancer progressing to
its end stages, Bella Crawford only wants to control the means of her
death.But she still acquiesces to Jack’s
desire for her to take chemotherapy, if only to give him some sense of peace
(thereby protecting what’s left of his guilt-ridden psyche.)At the same time, she sees Hannibal as the
one person in whom she can confide her real feelings.The interactions between Gina Torres and Mads
Mikkelsen are always fascinating.Bella
is portrayed as such a no bullshit person that her connection with Hannibal
seems either very odd or an exercise in high dramatic irony.But at heart, this relationship is another
example of the moral and ethical complexity that Bryan Fuller brings to the
Lecter character.There’s a genuine
desire to serve as protector and confessor in Hannibal’s demeanor around her,
yet that old sense of amoral curiosity never quite dissipates.In the key moment when she honors him by
choosing to conclude her Morphine overdose in his office, he seems to accept it
as a mantle of the humanity he claims to seek.And yet a moment later, he’s flipping the Gold French Rooster coin that
she’s given him as thanks for being her guide into the afterlife, channeling a
bit of Two-Face in letting chance decide whether he brings her back from the
dead.Her rage at him in the
post-revival hospital scene marks Hannibal as still not prepared to assume the
role of protector that he covets.

This rooster motif also plays
into the side story of Katherine Pimms, the acupuncturist/mercy killer.Played by the always delightful Amanda
Plummer, she also fancies herself to be a protector of the suffering (“I
protected these people from hopelessness”), while also using their exit from
this world as a connection to the greater consciousness, in this case by
turning one of them into a honey comb.It’s shades of “Amuse-Bouche”’sEldon Stammets once again, a serial killer with a conscience.It’s also a direct reference to the death
throes of Socrates, who (after self-administering his hemlock poison death
sentence) was asked by an attendant about the gradual loss of feeling in his
body (just as Katherine asks her patient about the gradual loss of feeling from
her needles.)As Hannibal notes to
Bella, Socrates’s dying gift of the rooster serves as confirmation of his
belief in death as a gateway to another world.

Of course, Hannibal’s pseudo-mythological portrayal of gateways to and from
other worlds (spiritual and mental) is a hallmark of the narrative thrust.In “Hassun”, Hannibal tells Jack that “The
magic door is always attractive.Step
through, and leave all your burdens behind.”Will fears the world of his visions crossing through the gateway of
reality (even as he finds bittersweet comfort in his opening fly fishing
fantasy of trying to serve as protector to Abigail Hobbs), and Hannibal’s long
game involves drawing Will through the gateway of insanity and into a
partnership with him.But it’s not
Lecter who offers the imprisoned profiler his most important gateway yet in
this episode.

Leave that duty to that most
unlikeliest of protector figures, Frederick Chilton.Raul Esparza hams it up so wonderfully as the
smarmy Chilton that it comes as a nice reversal when Will asks him to be his
psychiatrist in order to block out Hannibal.And to access a bit of information that provides the key to the locked
gateway inside his mind.Only by being
injected with truth serum for a narcoanalytic interview is he able to discover
the truth about Hannibal’s long term manipulation of him via hypnosis and
psychic driving.It’s a stunning
sequence, the culmination of Will’s long psychological wandering and a
psychedelic fever dream of the inner recesses of his damaged psyche crossed
with a religious epiphany (Will once again gazing to a light in the sky, much
like with Season 1’s Angel Maker murders.)Even when Chilton seems to be giving up the game in his subsequent
conversation with Hannibal, it’s actually a sly attempt at bonding him in
silence over the Abel Gideon case.Truly, sometimes you find your allies in the strangest places.

Beverly Katz, on the other hand,
has been a voice of measured reason throughout her run on the show, so no
surprise that she’s been willing to listen to Will and begin to serve as the protector
of his legacy.His second major
revelation of the episode, that Hannibal is eating the souvenirs of his victims
(and that he’s been fed some of those souvenirs), comes after she’s once again
provided him with pictures of the body spiral murders.And after so many accusations of his
instability, it’s Beverly that finally agrees to pursue Will’s leads and
investigate Hannibal’s house.Of all the
would-be protector figures in this episode, her motivations are arguably the
purest.So it’s only appropriate, in the
twisted ethical landscape of the show, that her nobility is rewarded with death
in Lecter’s lair.Her downfall is captured
in one of the great shots in the series, as the sub-basement’s power
methodically clicks on in layers, first with the unseen bodies she discovers,
then with the rear of the room where Hannibal awaits.It’s a stark metaphor for his ability to hide
in plain sight, as well as a visual callback to the moments in Season 1 when he
would be framed as a blurry figure influencing Will and other characters in the
foreground.And it also shows how
dangerous slightly adjusting one’s vision of reality to take in his darkness
can be.

To the leftovers:

*During his aforementioned
fantasy sequence with Abigail, Will repeats their conversation from Season 1,
in which they debate the difference between fishing and hunting (“one you
catch, the other you shoot.”)It takes
on added resonance now that Will has attempted to shoot Hannibal, only to
realize that he’ll have to catch him to gain any sense of justice.

*I’ve mentioned before how
Hannibal’s machinations sometimes take on an almost supervillain-esque
grandeur.But when you step back and
look at his character’s path, you realize that so much of his foresight is
gained simply by staying quiet and listening to those around him (who are often
all too willing to divulge key bits of information.)

*A note of advisory: if you ever
find yourself a character in the Lecterverse, STAY OUT OF BASMENTS!Nothing good can come from them.

Monday, May 25, 2015

In
which the boundaries of what’s considered normal are getting narrower.

“Ours
a love I held tightly

Feeling
the rapture grow

Like
a flame burning brightly

But
when she left, gone was the glow of

Blue
Velvet”

(“Blue
Velvet”/Bobby Vinton)

For an episode that deals so
heavily in one of the most well-worn motifs in televisual crime fiction (the
trial of a main character), “Hassun” presents a distinct unravelling of the
world for the characters surrounding this most stable of plot devices.The encroaching surrealism that will soon
dominate this season begins to steadily flood the various corners of the plot
(much like Will’s madness took the form of visions of water at the end of
Season 1.)Just as the Japanese course
of Hassun serves as the main event of the Kaiseki feast (which is then followed
by dishes that slowly conclude things), so too does this episode of the same
name serve as an early peak of relative normalcy in the season before the
gradual descent into a fever dream of insanity.

But there’s also another
reference point for “Hassun”, one that explores similar power relationships and
themes of the darkness at the edge of the psyche.One that also centers heavily around the
presence of a severed ear.And a
submerged sense of homoerotic intrigue between two men, one seemingly a hero
and one seemingly a villain.

Indeed, if Bryan Fuller isn’t
explicity referencing David Lynch’s Blue
Velvet in this episode, then at the very least he’s psychologically channeling
it.That film famously sends
All-American boy Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) into a world of
psychosexual trauma, predicated on his discovery of a severed human ear.In the key scene that truly begins his
descent, Jeffrey walks the idyllic nighttime streets of Lumberton, only for the
romantic dark of night to crossfade into the camera spiraling into that
mysterious ear.Abigail Hobbs’s ear
might’ve been the smoking gun in framing Will last season, but the ear of bailiff
Andrew Sykes (meant to throw suspicion away from him mid-trial) is the focal
point of “Hassun”’s plot twist, and the camera spiraling out of it as Jack and
the forensics team study the evidence recalls Lynch’s imagery.If the descent into the ear in Blue Velvet is meant to symbolize the
entrance into madness (and the subsequent dollying out of Jeffrey’s ear at the
conclusion symbolizing a mild return to sanity), perhaps Hannibal’s spiral out of the ear in this scene is a further
reference to the Hannibal Lecter’s viral infection of these characters’ worlds,
or another visual callback to Will’s fear of the netherworld of his visions
breaking into the real world.

Blue
Velvet
resonated so strongly in the culture upon its release because of its taboo
subject matter, but also because of the very recognizable plot and character
structure off of which it so deftly riffed.Lynch once described the film as “the Hardy Boys go to Hell”, and its
indebtedness to the world of Film Noir also offers a series of archetypical
subversions that go far beyond the Code-restricted subterfuge of those crime
melodramas.“Hassun” plays similar games
with its more easily recognizable aspects.During her courtroom testimony, Freddie Lounds is shot in stark chiaroscuro
lighting, her tilted hat and steamy delivery adding to the sense that she’s
playing the femme fatale (Brian Reitzell also includes subtle saxophone
intonations in the soundtrack that underscores her appearance.)And Will, of course, is the classic Hitchcockian
wrong man, caught in the web of a force greater and more maniacal than him
(which itself is a nod to a major Noir motif.)His opening dream, in which time stutters back and forth before he
ultimately throws the switch on his own electrocution, uses an execution method
that is still widely recognized, yet which has also been illegal in Maryland
for years (Martin O’Malley actually banned the death penalty in 2013, a year
before the airing of this episode.)But
Will is a long way off from Henry Fonda, his anti-social demeanor and
dalliances with chaos making him a far more complex figure.

Beyond its Noir trappings, Blue Velvet also offers a disturbing
portrait of how deeply psychosexual perversion penetrates the human psyche, its
central three characters forming a sadomasochistic love triangle for the
ages.Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) might
ostensibly be the heavy, but there’s a childlike longing at the heart of his
sexual enslavement of Dorothy Valens (Isabella Rosselini).Jeffrey wants to save Dorothy, but he first
finds sexual attraction to her when spying from her closet (and then again when
he witnesses Frank raping her).Jeffrey
and Dorothy’s violence-ridden sexual coupling is her warped attempt to reenact
Frank’s abuse, but Jeffrey also finds a modicum of sick pleasure in hurting
her.And the film’s main love story is
the Oedipal struggle between Frank and Jeffrey, the hero and villain finding
much unexpected common ground, the detective character/son drawn to replace the
criminal/father.

By this point of Hannibal’s run, the relationship between
Will and Hannibal has taken on similar leanings.Like Jeffrey, Will thrives on voyeurism, even
though he claims to want to pull himself away from the damage of his
visions.Hannibal holds more respect in
the world at large than Frank, but like him he’s also the dark
manipulator/Minotaur at the heart of the protagonist’s mental labyrinth.Alana might not match up perfectly with
Dorothy, but the love triangle that will soon ensue between these three has
similar overtones of manipulation and submerged violence (especially in Will’s
subconscious resentment of her romantic rejection of him.)And the pseudo-romantic nature of Hannibal’s
relationship with Will is much in keeping with the uncomfortably close one that
Frank and Jeffrey hold.Hannibal’s
assault of Will is more subtle than Frank’s, but his attempt to seduce him into
his darkness is right in line with Hopper’s psychopath.Memorably, Frank (to the tune of Patti Page’s
“Love Letters) threatens to send a love letter straight to Jeffrey’s heart in
the form of a bullet; when he discusses Will’s apparent fan with him, Hannibal
notes that “This killer wrote you a poem.Are you going to let his love go to waste?”

In both narratives, we’re forced
to confront the fluid lines between protagonist and antagonist, and between
good and evil.In “Hassun”’s opening,
both men are shown dressing for the trial in parallel form (ending with Will’s
handcuff and Hannibal’s cufflink, the latter almost as much of a social binding
as the former.)When they meet in
Baltimore State’s private room, the closeups of their faces form a shot/countershot
pattern in which the darkness at the edge of each man’s visage complements the
other.In the climactic montage of Jack,
Hannibal, and Will in various states of despair, Hannibal’s longing for Will’s
presence is once again represented by the empty chair he stares at in his
office.It’s a great evocation of the
climactic verse of Bobby Vinton’s song “Blue Velvet” (quoted at the top of this
essay).After all, Hannibal’s affection
for Will reaches a high point when he “sets his mind on fire” near the end of
Season 1.But for now, all he has are
the memories of that time, the afterglow of the fire.

To call the following leftovers
might be a misnomer.But they’re far
enough outside of the Lynch-Fuller main thrust that I’ll include them as such:

*When Jack refers to he and Kade
Purnell as the clowns in the ever-growing circus that Will’s case is becoming,
he once again taps into the deep feelings of futility that plagues him.Kade warns him not to spend his time
lamenting those he left behind (lest he become the next one), but the impotence
he feels in trying to help his dying wife, compounded with his guilt over Will
being the latest in a string of supervisory/fatherly failures, has him
trapped.In many ways, Jack’s journey
from unwitting enabler of Will’s framing to co-conspirator in the stealth hunt
for Hannibal is the backbone of this season, a good man trying to atone for
what seems to him like a lifetime of sacrificing his life to stalking death.

*On the verge of her romantic
fling with Hannibal, we get one of the last glances of Alan trying to reestablish
her bond with Will, climaxing in a final handclasp that could be a nod to
Bresson’s Pickpocket, in which
another criminal found spiritual redemption through a woman.

*The greatest refutation of the
classic courtroom milieu comes with the ritual murder of the judge.It also allows Hannibal to bring the funny
once again with “Not only is justice blind, it’s also mindless and heartless.”